I share with certain members of the British political establishment a fondness for the novels of Anthony Trollope - even if Auberon Waugh is convinced that John Major's declared passion for Trollope was a sham, something he thought he should say in order to give himself an aura of cultural credibility rather than something he actually felt.
I doubt if that's true. Trollope may not be among the very greatest of writers ("With all his mastery," V.S. Pritchett acutely observed, "Trollope is interested only in what people are like, not in what they are for"), but I can well see why his deft and often droll accounts of the ecclesiastical and political shenanigans of his day would appeal to modern politicos of a certain temperament.
And now, of course, as with almost every dead or living author, you can get him on audio tape. Indeed, if you're a dedicated Trollopian, you can invest in the complete Barchester and Palliser chronicles which actor Timothy West has spent the last eleven years recording. The label is called Cover to Cover and, as the name implies, it offers absolutely unabridged texts - in this case 275 hours of West on 199 tapes for a not inconsiderable £290.
I don't know if John Major is quite that much of a fan, but I certainly know I'm not. Gird your loins (or whatever other relevant part of the anatomy) for the autumn publication by Anchor Books of The End of Alice by American novelist A.M. Homes.
"Revolting trash," the New York Times reviewer declared. "The End of Alice made me sick," Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel confessed, adding (just in case we didn't get the message): "I mean, it actually made my stomach turn."
So what's it about? Well, according to the publisher, "the narrator is a paedophile serving his twenty-third year in prison" whose correspondence with "a nineteen-year-old woman intent on seducing a young neighbourhood boy" enables the reader "to discern the narrator's monstrous character and to tread the wafer-thin line between the truly evil and the everyday."
The author is a young woman who, to judge by her photograph, looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but Anchor assure us that her book "has been reviled for its subject matter". They add that it's also been "revered for its artistry," but that seems almost like an afterthought in an advertising campaign intent on whipping up as much controversy as possible. Let's wait and see what all the fuss is about.
THIRTY young Northern Ireland poets - fifteen Catholic and fifteen Protestant, as it happens - are taking part in the first-ever Aran Islands International Poetry Festival, which starts today in the National University of Ireland, Galway (formerly known as UCG), and runs until next weekend.
Only in Ireland, I suppose, could an Aran Islands festival take place on the mainland, but given the weather we've been having, that's probably just as well - otherwise such luminaries as US poet laureate Robert Haas, Nobel winner Czeslaw Milosz, Adrienne Rich and Eavan Boland might never have made it to the islands or might never get back.
Anyway, if you want to attend any of the readings, the person to contact is Maire Mhic Uidhir, at the aforementioned National University of Ireland, Galway (091-750418).
Tomorrow night in the Abbey Theatre, Waterstone's are celebrating their tenth birthday here with a reading featuring six well-known Irish writers - Clare Boylan, Roddy Doyle, Dermot Healy, Colum McCann, Edna O'Brien and Colm Toibin. Tickets are £5 each , and if you're lucky you might just get the last ones. Contact either Waterstone's at 6791260 or the Abbey itself.
The literary Celtic Tiger is obviously still in rude commercial health, with four Irish books currently in the British paperback Top Fifty list - Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (seventh place), Maeve Binchy's Evening Class (eighth), Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors (eleventh) and Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark (fortieth).